imomus

Well, isn't this basically a question of balancing various things we think are good? We think excitement and innovation are good, and we think "necessity is the mother of invention". But we become somewhat Mephistophelean when we argue that desperation and poverty are good because they bring excitement and innovation, especially when it's the desperation and poverty of others and not ourselves. We become even more diabolical when we start to argue that desperation and poverty are models which might be adopted elsewhere with salutory results. But perhaps it's more a question of thinking, "Well, look, all this poverty exists anyway. We have the choice either to ignore it, or to learn something from it. If we can learn anything at all, that suffering hasn't been in vain." So Koolhaas' Lagos is at once a big experimental petri dish where we can observe extreme experiences, and a Christian-Humanistic example of the process of "redemption". Or maybe it's just an architect sticking it to the planners who've made his job so much more boring over the years...